From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Jul 02 08:54:11 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KE4eo-0002XJ-Ey for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:11 -0700 Received: from rv-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.198.249]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KE4ek-0002X7-58 for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:10 -0700 Received: by rv-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id b17so438549rvf.46 for ; Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:04 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=dhd9HVYQJ92MNP3XIeQaVl2WMipAs5/W6sdglyj6+Dw=; b=FrtPzMeqG3d0sTTJLMMB5pAQ+Z5Mlak2t6eMlZt028AyYdstfxUrA4w4zTLceAIKT8 sYKix4XJprBVUksAmlXfI/UuoWJfoYQKPr7Rl5pvxzCnKTOx29XxEKDGL11axrYQppAY MYKgKsvbG8D/mzQ9Z3pNhReu+fDyY3wsvsUN4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition :references; b=kxfpR8PXTM9ev33al+qbcxp+hgE1bxx2oq0J0V8RPTUKtqVIdTGwfOoUMsBQadyhtC hwb9NP/ajQWdwfGhYGbOg3//DGJYjDEl+QcOHq+3iQfQazNyq8EUvAt00aY3kXXEVvM9 rVVNDpdbYMnYKxSr5Lnbr438+cvTqNEWJHJyk= Received: by 10.141.83.15 with SMTP id k15mr4488843rvl.74.1215014044821; Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.141.179.16 with HTTP; Wed, 2 Jul 2008 08:54:04 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <96f789a60807020854l1ceb2468hdc9212d52261c699@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:54:04 -0400 From: "Michael Turniansky" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: tanru order In-Reply-To: <925d17560807011105i4e5d0d6bsaca750e3f13bd347@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <737b61f30806281910q2e8c38e1x1efdd2b8e4ef87ab@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560806290645l23118bbeyaa71d7dfa0b13bdb@mail.gmail.com> <737b61f30806290816t5663ce55s341e7eb9f3762986@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560806290845n1b2a591vfa042cb4bb7a5f7a@mail.gmail.com> <96f789a60807010911t711b869et30c635b37ab35e66@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560807011105i4e5d0d6bsaca750e3f13bd347@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 666 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mturniansky@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Jorge Llambías wrote: > On 7/1/08, Michael Turniansky wrote: > >> [W]ithout the ka, "vajni mutce" means (to >> me) an important muchness, that is to say, that the extreme thing >> itself is important, but not necessarily that it extreme in the >> quailty of being important. > > Why would you take it to be extreme in some unmentioned property > in preference to the one mentioned in the seltau? > But that's just it. It's NOT a "property" mentioned in the seltau. It's just a gismu. It could be a noun (an important person/object/animal/concept, etc.), a verb (being important), an adverb (importantly), or an adjective (important). But it is NOT a property (importantance), event (being important), quantity (amount of importance), fact (an idea of importance) etc. without those camvo that make it so (ka, nu, ni, du'u/si'o, respectively). >> For example, I can easily see "mi vajni >> mutce be lo ka bebna" --- I am an important superfool. > > Yes, when an explicit property is put in x2, then that one has priority, > no doubt about it. (FWIW dept: I meant to leave out the "be", but the meaning doesn't actually change, just makes the X2 more able to be swapped out, as it's no longer tightly bound to tertau, but to the tanru as a whole) > >> Things in the >> seltau position tend to be interpreted adjectivally/adverbially, as >> well they should be, since they are supposed to modify the tertau >> (which would therefore be treated nounally, verbally, (or adverbially >> if they followed by another brivla)) > > What does "adjectivally/adverbially" mean in Lojbanic terms? Ummm... the same they mean in any language? Modifying the noun, modifying the verb/adjective/adverb > I don't see how in {vajni mutce}, {vajni} fails to modify the tertau: > it provides a good choice of property for its x2 place. > Do you have the same objections for {vajni zmadu}, {vajni mleca}, > {vajni traji}? > I do, indeed. Let me just set out one paradoxic thing, though: As LUJVO, I would actually say that vaizma, vajme'a, etc. would be more lobykai, but that's partly because lujvo have whatever relationship between the rafsi the definer sets forth, and we have certain traditional conventions with regards to some of them (essentially, that which was imported from English: "more green" -> greenER, "most green" -> "greenEST", changing prefixed words to suffixed morphemes, which was carried through with Loglan.) . >> Without the ka in the tanru, it >> also requires mental massaging to get "vajni mutce" into "mutce be lo >> ka vajni". > > Compared to what? There was no comparative term in my sentence. You had earlier asserted that you liked "vajni mutce" because it (and I'm paraphrasing here) required no complexity to expand it to "mutce be lo ka vajni". I'm asserting that in fact, it does (as you have to add a "ka" that's not in there), you just chose to gloss over it. > What is the explicit meaning of {mutce vajni}? > (I mean explicit in Lojban terms, expanding the tanru.) The explicit meaning? Hmm... possibly something along the lines of "vajni je mutce be lo ka vajni" But that proves nothing. I would probably expand "barda gerku" along similar lines: "gerku je barda be fi le'e gerku" I ask you -- how would you expand "blanu tsani"? Possibly "tsani je blanu"? What about "tsani blanu"? "blanu [be] tai{/pa'a} le'e tsani"? (Notice, btw, that the expansion "blanu je tsani" means exactly the same as "tsani je blanu", and yet still would be an expansion of the former, not the latter, tanru, despite the order of the gismu being switched). It's an established rule that the tanru as a whole may refer to things that are not really in either category of the compononent gismu (although you would be at great risk of loss of intelligibility), but that the seltau modifies the tertau. Good luck expanding many of the tanru in section 14-15 of chapter 5. (BTW, I notice the refgram itself (which I know you are reflexively iconoclastic towards, no matter what it says), in chapter 5, ex. 4.1 uses "mutce bo barda") > > If you only say {ti na mutce}, naturally I have no idea what you may > mean, I will ask {mutce ma}. But if there is some clue in the context, for > example if we have been discussing things with a given property, or > if we use an informative seltau, I can figure out what the implicit x2 is. > That's my point. I submit that "ka vajni kei" would be an "informative seltau", but that "vajni" alone would imply something else. --gejyspa